What are meant more?
by Rogercat
Summary: Dior and Nimloth suffers from the unspoken legacy of Luthien and Beren, while Celegorm tries to help them


It had been a strange feeling in the air, all day. The Noldor living in Amon Ereb could tell that something was not normal. Two of them, a tall. muscular hunter with rare silver hair and a very young Sinda with dark brown hair, could be seen together at the southern side, enjoying the last warmth of summer before autumn came.

"My parents would be horrified if they ever finds out that Nimloth and I are here, and not in Lanthir Lamath."

Celegorm, who had kept himself busy with some wood-cutting, looking up from his half-finished item. It was the other person at his side, who had spoken.

"I think they would be more scared over that their only child and his wife are among the people with most reasons to hurt you. Especially with your own children coming along."

The other Elf slowly sat up in the grass, a simple movement which seemed to tire him. Indeed there seemed to be a aura of tiredness around him even as he remained still, and he struggled to breathe properly. Up close, his facial features betrayed that he was of mixed blood, but not born between a Noldo and Sinda couple. No, his face was refined yet rough at the same time, a body build of wider shoulders than on a Elf.

"Are your third brat spiritually draining you again? Really, that kid should have enough from both you and Nimloth at this point….Dior? Oi, Dior, don't faint!"

Too late, his much younger companion had already passed out.

"By Oromë, are the Valar trying to tell your damned parents how idiotic their death and return to life would be, given how you were born with a sickly health and you have no siblings?!" Celegorm cursed, carefully lifting up the Half-Elven in his arms and hurried to the healers.

~X~X~X~X~X~X

While waiting for Dior to wake up in the infirmary, Celegorm saw his oldest brother Maedhros being followed around across the front yard by Dior's little twin sons, Eluréd, and Elurín, like a set of ducklings. Somehow, it was very much pleasant to see that his brother still had that way with children which made them trust him, once looking past his scars.

"Did my husband faint again?" a feminine voice asked from one of the windows. There, Nimloth laid in a bed surrounded by pillows for comfort, her pregnant stomach showing that it could not be long before the birth of her third child. But there was something frail about her, a similar tiredness like what haunted Dior.

"Yes, but he should wake up soon. It is hard to say what worries me more, that his parents expects him to father a lot of children with you and not thinking of how that could affect you in a spiritual manner, or that his poor health seems to be linked to that they actually was dead before his birth."

Celegorm had not expected to care for someone who could have been his son, had things just been a tiny bit different. But Dior had somehow ending up as a disappointment for his parents and maternal grandparents, they had hoped for a strong heir to show the world that yes, the Quest of the Silmaril had been worth all the dangers. Yet instead, Dior had been born with a sickly health and narrowly surviving to adulthood, constantly haunted by ailments which the shut-off Elves of Doriath had no cure for. He was fair, yes, but in a gaunt-looking way and his poor health would never allow him to be a warrior.

"They want him to leave some kind of legacy, and what did they chose? Parenthood, in the hope of that at least one of his own children inherits the health I had as a unwed maiden! Of course Luthien must have more descendants than just a sickly son...ha ha, very funny…._I think not!_"

Nimloth loved Dior fiercely despite the age difference between them and had never been bothered by the fact that he was not strong in health, but she was very dissatisfied over that no one at the royal court in Doriath seemed to think of how being pregnant and giving birth would affect her, in body and spirit. Her own side of the Sindarin royal family had wanted them to wait for a couple of years before a third child, something Dior and Nimloth had also wanted, and yet it seemed like the mortal blood from Beren had its own plans.

"Mother is selfish, yes…." Dior was heard muttering from his bed, having woken up by hearing Nimloth and Celegorm talk. Over the years since his own marriage six years ago, Dior had also grown disillusioned with his parents, especially in that they seemed to expect him to do the duty of giving the family more heirs, without having to do the deed themselves.

"Let's hope that your third brat will be enough for them. I do not think Nimloth can take another pregnancy, especially if it would be three years again between the births. She is already looking worrying alike to the description of my paternal grandmother Miriel did when she was carrying my father in her womb, and he was her only child!"

The married couple both looked horrified at the mere mention of another pregnancy.

"If grandfather Thingol wants another heir, he can beget one on grandmother himself, or lock up my parents into a room until that mother is pregnant again with a second child! Are not mortal men able to still sire children well into their sixties if they are in good health?" Dior almost snarled in anger. That about mortal men and old age was not something Celegorm knew much about, but he could understand that Dior resented how his parents did not seem to care about how he was affected by all this.

"Do you really want that unborn brat, or not?"

At first, neither one spoke. Then, Dior almost began to cry in despair, his shoulders shaking as he said in a thick voice;

"I do not want to be _a breeding stud _for my family…!"

Even Nimloth did not seem to be much in joy over the third child she was carrying right now. Leaving her own bed, she walked over to her husband and hugged him tightly to show support for him.

"We pleaded, flat out begged to be allowed to only have the boys. Two children from one pregnancy was enough for us. Our sons was like a gentle summer rain when I carried them, there was almost no spiritual draining of us at all. But this little one…"

She stopped, then looked at Celegorm.

"You have seen how we both are affected by this daughter. She is a autumn storm, tearing apart and causing damage. She have been drawing more spiritually from me and Dior than what her brothers ever did together. _Are we cruel to not wanting her? With the possible risk that she might even cause my death by that I might have no strength left at birth?_ Must Dior suffer though the pain of being a widower with three small children, and possibly be forced to marry again, this time to a female who will not understand him in the same manner as I do? Being forced to father a fourth child, that may draw the very last of his own spiritual strength and die a slow, painful death from doing a duty he hates?"

Celegorm shook on his head. That was a cruelty no one should have to do. Thingol and his family was playing with the lives of the younger family members, not seeing the very possible fatal risks of playing this game of forced baby-making.

"Shall I gather my brothers and do a plan to send the girl to Doriath, as soon as she should be able to travel after birth?"

Dior nodded weakly, gasping for breath before saying:

"Our sons are still young. Perhaps they could forget that they was to have a sibling in the first place, if we do this right."

It would be cruel to the unborn princess Nimloth was carrying, to give her over to a wet nurse and sent away from Amon Ereb to be raised by her grandparents instead, but if there was no other way to make Luthien and Beren see their own son resenting them to the point of that his family voluntarily become hostages to the enemy just to get away from the duty of more children...well, they really should have tried more for a sibling to Dior and not leaving him as the single child born to their marriage.

"No one should have to carry the duties of the parents."

Besides, Dior had proven himself to be far different in character from his mother. He had, out of honest curiosity, sought out Celegorm when he was old enough and listened to his version of how the events in Nargothrond had happened. Their unlikely relationship remained neutral for most part, but the third son of Fëanor felt like that Dior saw him as a better father figure than Beren, and Nimloth felt more safe here in Amon Ereb with skilled soldiers than in Doriath. Would it really be that strange that they wanted to escape from their selfish relatives and enjoy whatever short years Dior had left to live, in peace together, focusing on their family?


End file.
